Jason Arday | Diversity policy and academic excellence do not go together at all
Machiel Keestra argues in Folia that diversity policy and academic excellence go together perfectly, and that the Jason Arday affair does not prove otherwise. According to law student Feike Otto van der Zee, that line of reasoning is flawed. “Academic excellence is not a neutral yardstick that becomes fairer as a result of affirmative action.”
In his opinion piece of 26 August, Machiel Keestra points to cases of academic fraud involving white men – Stapel, Wakefield, Schön – which did not cast doubt on the entire group of white men. He concludes that this asymmetry actually demonstrates that diversity policies are still necessary. That reasoning is flawed.
In 2023, Jason Arday was appointed, with great fanfare, as professor of the sociology of education at Cambridge – the youngest Black professor ever. The appointment was explicitly presented in the context of diversity. The available facts show that Arday was appointed primarily on the basis of his skin colour and was immediately appointed as a professor. Cambridge has therefore itself chosen to make skin colour an explicit part of the rationale and public presentation of the appointment. It was not the critics of this policy, but the policymakers themselves who made the choice to place skin colour at the centre.
No isolated incident
It later emerged that his thesis contained extensive plagiarism: there were misleading claims about affiliations and achievements, and according to several media outlets, there were indications that Cambridge had ignored or dismissed earlier warnings. Arday resigned and died shortly afterwards.
This is not a random, isolated incident. It is the predictable, tragic consequence of a policy that prioritises identity over independent quality control. Keestra acknowledges that diversity policy must never mean that scientific integrity is assessed less critically. In practice, however, this is exactly what happens.
Diversity icon
When an appointments committee is keen to have a “diversity icon”, signs that would lead to further investigation in the case of other candidates are more readily ignored for fear of accusations of racism. That is precisely what appears to have happened at Cambridge.
The comparison with Stapel, Wakefield or Schön is therefore flawed. Those men were assessed within a meritocratic framework. Their fraud was a failure of the control mechanisms, not of a policy that had appointed them on the basis of their skin colour. In Arday’s case, however, representativeness was indeed a key criterion. When that criterion becomes the guiding principle, fraud is not merely an individual problem, but a symptom of diluted standards.
Concealment
Concealing this essential context surrounding Arday’s appointment – namely that Cambridge itself prioritised skin colour – can hardly lead to any conclusion other than that this silence is ideologically motivated, with the aim of defending the diversity policy. In this case, that policy actually serves as a prime example of the undermining of academic integrity.
Academic excellence is not a neutral yardstick that becomes fairer through affirmative action policies. Publications, citations and grants are imperfect indicators, but remain the best measures of intellectual achievement. By adjusting or relativising them according to group characteristics, we undermine the indicators themselves. Diversity policy introduces a political objective – proportional representation – that is at odds with the scientific objective: truth and quality.
Mismatch
Preferential policies also create mismatches. People who are recruited under different standards are more likely to end up in positions where they do not perform to their full potential. This harms the individual concerned, their colleagues and the institution, and actually reinforces the very stereotypes that one claims to be combating.
Academia – and journalism – benefit from a diversity of perspectives and ideas. Demographic diversity is no guarantee of this. Ideological uniformity under the banner of inclusion is, rather, a threat.
Ironically, the UvA itself applies this line of thinking. In the vacancy notice for the new editor-in-chief and director of Folia, the Folia Civitatis Foundation states that it values diversity and seeks a working environment in which everyone feels at home. Equal opportunities sound noble, but when coupled with an emphasis on diversity as an end in itself, it quickly becomes an invitation to let group characteristics influence the decision.
Irrelevant
Who is the best journalist or manager should be irrelevant to their background or gender. By placing diversity so high on the agenda, the UvA is also implicitly indicating that representation plays a role – precisely the mechanism that leads to cases such as Arday’s in the academic world.
The lesson is not that we need to work harder on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but that universities and the media must stop using people as symbols. Assess candidates on the basis of their work, integrity and contribution. Anything that falls short of this is not inclusion, but an undermining of the excellence that academia and journalism are meant to serve.
Feike Otto van der Zee is a third-year bachelor law student at the UvA.
